IPPNW Charity concert

in support of the foundation of a children’s orchestra in the Fukushima PrefectureWelcome address by Chihoko Nakata

Past Dates

Sunday, 16 September 2012

20:00

Philharmonie, Chamber Music Hall

19:00 work introduction with Helge Grünewald

Soloists of the Berlin Philharmonic and guests play chamber music from the New World in aid of Japan. Even a year after the devastating earthquake of Fukushima, the country is still coping with its consequences. Proceeds from this concert go towards the founding of a youth orchestra in Fukushima Prefecture. The programme includes works by Dvořák, Carter, Schoenberg, Piazzolla, Cage and Bacharach.

Scrivo in Vento is the poetic title of the flute solo Elliott Carter wrote in 1991 for the Festival d’Avignon. The premiere fell on the 687th birthday of Petrarch. Carter took the title of his work from a verse by the poet: “I plough the waves and build my house on sand and write in wind.”

Edgard Varèse composed his work Density 21,5 for flute in 1936, for his French compatriot Georges Barrère. The title refers to the platinum instrument used by Barrère: 21,5 indicates the density of platinum.

Shortly before his 72nd birthday in exile in California, Arnold Schoenberg suffered a heart attack. He was saved by a heart injection. In his String Trio op. 45 he worked through this near-death experience, a reflection in time-lapse on his life, and including a waltz as an original idiom from his home city.

From 1892 to 1895, Antonín Dvořák lived in Manhattan, and was appointed director of the New York Conservatorium. During this period, he wrote his String Quartet op. 96. “The Americans expect great things of me,” he wrote in a letter, “and the main thing is, so they say, to show them to the promised land of a new and independent art; in short, to create a national music”.

As soon as we think of ‘easy listening’, Burt Bacharach comes to mind. The 12 cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic play his South American Getaway, which he wrote for Hollywood, in an effervescent version.

Argentinian Astor Piazzolla’s first love was actually not tango, but jazz: he grew up in New York, and it was not until later in Buenos Aires that he became a tango musician. During his studies in Paris under Nadia Boulanger, she lamented the absence of Piazzolla’s own thumbprint in his student works. Finally, she asked him to play her a tango, saying afterwards: “Don’t you realise, this is the real Piazzolla, not the other one? (…) Your tango is the new music, and it is honest.”